CONNECT

With the unavoidable amount of coverage of issues around immigration and deportation in the U.S., there’s one prevailing narrative among a portion of Black people. There’s an argument that Black activists, organizers and others in our communities need not put our time and efforts into addressing immigration because “that’s not our issue.”

This is an entirely nonsensical (albeit very much typical) stance for several reasons: [Read more…]

A PSA for my fellow Gay men, and perhaps anyone else in the LGBTQ community.

I’m gonna start this by laying out a little scenario:

Let’s say you’re a Gay man who primarily has non-LGBTQ (a.k.a. cisgender-heterosexual or “straight”) men as friends (which you likely applaud yourself for, daily…but that’s another issue). Y’all are just casually hanging out and they’re all talking about sex. They’re exchanging stories of their recent “conquests,” and are having an absolute ki. And then, you try to chime about your last sexual experience, in the exact same way that they just did.

…but you feel the good vibes noticeably drop. It gets awkward, and you immediately get the hint that you should back off from your story. You deflate, retreat into your own head (where you’ll likely quietly replay that moment in a cringeworthy loop), and let them take back over the conversation.

This is likely not an unfamiliar experience for Gay men who hang around folks who are non-LGBTQ. And many people’s go-to response may be to just roll with it and not see it as a big deal. But let’s be clear about one thing: [Read more…]

This is actually something that, after years of explaining, I’ve grown entirely bored with. However, this is a topic that comes up over and over again. So I want to give it a place on my blog for posterity.

RE: “I love Gay people. I just disagree with their lifestyle.”

First of all, falsely characterizing my sexual identity as a “lifestyle” that can be disagreed with is trash from the outset. Who I’m sexually and romantically attracted to is not a “lifestyle.” It’s simply who I’m sexually and romantically attracted to. Is there a such thing as a (Black) Gay culture and community? Absolutely, but Black Gay and Queer folks aren’t synonymous with that. Similarly to Black people, as a whole, Gay/Queer/SGL folks are not a monolith. Attraction to the same sex isn’t always synonymous with whatever your stereotypical ideas of Queerness are.

This is the 3rd of a multi-part series, where I highlight how this system often works against men/boys who live in the intersection of Blackness and Queerness. In the first part, I discussed the murder of Giovanni Melton, a 14 year-old boy killed by his own father. The second part goes over the case of Gemmel Moore, murdered by an affluent white Gay man. Here, I’ll be discussing the overall theme, of how the general disregard for Black LGBTQ people enabled both of these tragedies.

I decided to focus on the murders of Giovanni and Gemmel because I felt like both cases, together, highlight conflict that all Black Gay men (and Black LGBTQ folks, overall) face. There’s risk of discrimination, erasure and violence in most any space that we’re in. There’s anti-Blackness in many LGBTQ spaces, and anti-Queerness in many Black spaces.

Black LGBTQ folks are constantly put in a position of having to choose between race and sexual/gender identity. Worse, not only are we expected to “pick a side,” but it never is to benefit us. WhiteGayze™ expect us to fight for Gay/LGBTQ causes through a white-centered lens, with no regards to race. Black people (primarily cisgender & heterosexual) expect us to fight for Black causes, but through the lens of cishet men (i.e. “Race first”**), with no regards to sexual/gender identity. And any time we try to fully affirm ourselves, we’re labeled a “distraction.”

Truth of the matter is, the goal isn’t to advance true liberation by subverting white supremacist, colonial systems. The real goal of many people is to see Black cisgender, heterosexual, able-bodied men and/or WhiteGayze™ sit in the position that white, cishet, able-bodied men currently hold. And they want us to happily and quietly take every bit of their abuse in the process. [Read more…]

Continuing the “Gay shit” for Pride 2017, I thought this would be a good time to revisit a rant I’ve made before. Of course, said rant, in its original form, is currently unavailable, because fuck Twitter. So, might as well recreate it in blog form. I wanna take this time to break down why “Love Is Love” is a terrible way to advocate for LGBTQ people. Particularly, since this recently popped up on my Facebook news feed:

“In June we celebrate love.” …tuh

As with most any other trendy form of activism, “Love is Love” seems innocent enough on its face. It’s another form of pushing the message of equality for LGBTQ people…to advocate that we’re “just like” the heteros.